The Ukrainian President, Volodymr Zelensky, appears to be the name of some Olympic shot- putter from Kyiv, Kharkiv or Senkivka- one of the Eastern Europian cities. Agencies covering the Ukraine crisis have made these tongue twisters household names just as the Gold medal win in javelin throw by Neeraj Chopra had made the discerning Indian aware of the qualifying distance needed by a competitor to enter the finals.
Devastating pictures of residents scrambling amidst the debris of blown-up apartments, smashed window panes, dismembered chandeliers and dust covered computers have been complementing the shattered hopes and dreams of the local residents.
When Oxana Gulenko, whose father had fought for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, is wrecked by an explosion near her flat in Kyiv, she cries in anguish ,”What should we think? Putin should be burnt in hell…. .” It pains when the enemy is one amongst your own brethren of the past.
The travails of war are universal and timeless.
March, 1971. The rumblings of the war had started as Pakistan became belligerent and due to mass atrocities, murder, rape and kidnappings by its armies, the Bangla residents had been dislocated from their homes in the then East Pakistan.
The brunt of the exodus had been borne by India as in a buildup to the second partition of Pakistan in just twenty five years, the Indian cities were flooded with Bengali speaking masses, mainly children and young ladies. The economics of the upcoming war and its repercussions saw the rationing in place. I have vivid memories of the ration shop at the corner of the street, where we lived in Fateh Tiba. The portly shop owner, dressed in white bush shirt and lined pyjamas, would try to impart some degree of order by giving instructions in his chaste Punjabi. And after a wait of couple of hours one would be happy to get a kilo of sugar,rice and wheat for each one of the family members.
Innocent that I was at eleven, preparing for the imminent war meant sirens going up in the city for mock drills of an air raid when we had to cringe behind a door in the corner of a room . How that was safer fails any reasoning till now. Some of the more enterprising friends had a pit dug up in their compounds where they were trained to jump in and lie low and prone till the danger had passed away. Simple solutions to big problems!
The announcements on our school intercom asking the students to contribute old clothings and messages for numerous blood donation camps gave vague idea, to my impressionable mind, of the duties of a good and responsible citizen.
The memory of the special postage stamp on a letter from my nana Jee in Delhi has turned sepia just like the letter itself.
People chipped in with their own ways. If St Paul’s, the school of my initial days, filmed tear-jerker Balak, which I remember having seen in Man Prakash talkies with Manoj, now a cardiologist in US, Sharmila Tagore and Dharmendra starrer Anupama, was roped in for a charity show by SMS Medical College, Jaipur.
Come December, and the song “Chal, chal, chal mere haathi, o mere sathi..” playing on AIR, on a Friday afternoon, was interrupted by an unusual announcement. “Pakistan’s Air Forces have attacked India. Please stand by for an important message by the Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi…”read the familiar voice of the news reader Ramanuj Prasad Singh.
The war had been unleashed.
What followed were blaring sirens and dark evenings as the “black outs” forced us inside our razaais and we stumbled in our rooms with whatever little light we could manage from a feeble candle or a Nootan stove flickering on depleting reserves of rationed kerosene.
Newspapers reporting the exploits of the Indian fighter plane, Gnat, a diminutive beast, against the demonic Pakistani Sabre jets, and the Indian Centurion tanks pummelling the Paton tank of Pakistan as also the famous Ghazi submarine sinking near the Karachi port were the talks of the folklore across the country. Radios, groups around pan or chai shops, in colleges and schools were agog with war stories dripping with patriotic flavour.
As was the early morning radio programme, aired by the Jaipur station, which cockled the City listeners with its rustic Rajasthani parodies. Alternating with the staccato short wave transmissions from BBC, Ganpat Lal Dangi, on Jaipur radio, regaled his audience, when his character, गिगलिया के बापू, narrated the story of a Paton tank grounded by the Indian forces and their dancing around the Pak soldiers to the tune of “ maar diya jaye, ke chod diya jaye, bol tere saath kya salook kiya jaye..!”
With rhetorics after self-aggrandising rhetorics, President Yayha Khan with General Tikka Khan sounded immature and child-like as the Indian Prime Minister and Sam Manekshaw, the Indian Field Marshall, rallied the Indian forces with elegance and aplomb.
War finished decisively on 16th December. There were jubilations all around the nation. Our school reopened and along with it came back my school blues.
The familiar sight of stiff-lipped lady teachers walking down the aisle of the classrooms, the strong smells of their hair-oils and the Pond’s talc sprinkled generously on their fair necks and partially uncovered chest, the morning assemblies, the National radiant readers English book and the multiplication tables all seemed to return in distressing proportions.
And then there was the mortal fear of me being dispossessed of my valuables- my new Natraj pencils, scented erasers, sharpeners and even the coveted Camlin geometry box, which I managed to have once in a while. The bullies of the class would rob them off from me sending me into throes of sulking depression with no body to “tattle” to.
Initial days of reintroduction to the classes being long over, the boys had now settled in their groove and were back to their talkative and mischievous selves. The teachers seemed more congenial and the girls in the class more friendly, though the interaction was limited to either exchange of some notes, a pencil or an eraser. We had still not graduated to writing with pen.
I
In fact we were on the roll.
Till I realised that one of the girls usually sitting in the front rows had been absent for last few days.
Bearing reasonably sharp features on her angular face with her black hair tied up in a tight plait, she was slightly better built and swarthier than her other friends. As she was mostly silent, her absence had gone unnoticed.
She was Asma Zaidi.
And when she did return after a month or so, she was even more reserved, more quiet. It turned out that she had lost her father, a major in the Indian army, in an ambush near Chittagong.
The new Asma was a product of the war.
Not knowing how to broach the tabooed topic of death or how to react on meeting her, I remember keeping safe distance from her and avoiding any sort of eye contact with her, however accidental it might have been. She was fighting a lone and emotional battle.
The class teacher proudly talked about her family. A family of army personnels hailing from Churu, her grandfather had fought for undivided India in WW II along with other soldiers, some of whom had later opted to move to Pakistan. I could see that Asma was a picture of stony aloofness when the teacher elaborated about the war. As the teacher finished, Asma wiped a tear from her jawline with the pad of her thumb.
The friends who had fought the battles along together in the world war were now estranged foes fighting against each other. This is the greatest humanitarian tragedy of most of the wars.
One Sultan Khan, much against his voluntary participation, is pitted against Sultan Singh just as the Muscovites find their own erstwhile Kyiv, the modern European capital with bustling bars and cafes, slipping into the war zone in a matter of three days. Or in Kharkiv an administrative building reminding them of their own Soviet Union of yesteryears, being razed by Russian soldiers in a remorseless act. With Russia rolling out bombers, nuclear silos and submarines and threatening Armageddon, glass shards, bits of metal and shell casings lay scattered over hundreds of yards of pavement in Kyiv.
Yet in Moscow, it is Anastasia whose heart bleeds for her friends in Ukraine. “We are in touch with our Ukrainian friends and I have no words which can comfort them.”
Like it was Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the Pakistani poet, expressing his poignancy over his alienation from the literary friends in East Pakistan, the modern Bangla Desh:
Hum thehre ajnabi itni muddaton ke baad
Phir banege aashna kitni mulaaqaaton ke baad
Kab nazar mein aayegi bedaag sabz ki bahaar
Khoon ke dhabbe dhulenge
Kitni barsaton ke baad We are now strangers who have known each other as friends
How many meetings it will take for us to know each other again?
When will our gaze behold the bloom of green fields
How many rains it will take to wash the blood stains?
Whether it is Asma in Jaipur, an Anastasia in Moscow an Oxana Gulenko in Kyiv, or Faiz in Pakistan, their wails shall fall on deaf ears of the perpetrators of mayhem. There shall always be a Yahya Khan, a Tikka Khan or a Putin whose eyes will turn blind to human sufferings until someday they balk at their expansionist designs and soften their attitude when they listen to the immortal lines penned by Shakeel Badayuni in 1952( Baiju Bawra)
Kyun tumne lagaaye hai yahan zurm ke dere
Dhan saath na jayega, bane kyun ho lootere
Peete ho garibon ka lahoo shaam savere
Khud paap Karo, naam shaitan ka ho badnam
Insaan bano, karlo bhalai ka koi kaam.
May be …may not be!!
Very nicely written. We do remember war of 1971 so well. So much miseries added to human life.
War is basically fought by civilians who fight for food basic amenities etc. Homeless people orphan hungry children who really fight through out life.
Thanks Rajeev for picking up sensitive thought provoking issues.
Two things are still etched in my memory about the Bangladesh liberation war, which were reported in newspapers.
One that the pakistan army tied men, women and children on the rooftops of their military installations to use them as human shields against indian aircrafts and,
Two, Pakistan army left behind thousands of Bangladeshi women pregnant, after they retreated.